by C. L. Bevill
Bubba shuddered.
Precious put her chin on Bubba’s knee and muttered. Her paws twitched as she slept. They’d stopped for dinner, and the dog had gotten her fill of chicken, which was the reason she was in a full carbohydrate coma. She particularly liked the extra-crispy version of the Colonel’s recipe. She was also partial to the mashed potatoes and gravy. However, the coleslaw wasn’t her favorite, and she had been known to spit the biscuits as much as five feet away.
Bubba turned into the lane and abruptly stopped at the gate, inadvertently proving that he had, indeed, repaired his brakes. Surprisingly, the gates were half shut. He couldn’t have driven through them even if he had so desired. The heavy gates canted heavily over the road and would have scraped the sides of the truck into crumpled aluminum foil-like balls.
Someone had tried to shut the gates and discovered that the gates didn’t want to be shut anymore. One of the oversized S’s was half off. The corrosion on the bolts attaching it to the gate had managed to free the top part of the S. It had swung so that it was now upside down. ¿Had the letter turned Spanish?
“What the—?” Bubba muttered. He wondered what gold-hunting, broken-brained numskull had tried to do that. His mother and Miz Adelia were too smart and knew that the gate wasn’t going to move without welding equipment, a boatload of WD-40, and a squadron of highly motivated WWE fighters. Someone’s back was likely hurting at the moment. Had they thought there was gold underneath the black wrought-iron of the gates? Maybe they had tried to carry the gates off to sell at an antique store?
Bubba couldn’t help chuckling to himself. A few months before, an actively senseless moron who had watched an old episode of Scooby Doo, decided the gold must be in one of the columns of the mansion. There were still axe marks on some of the Grecian-styled supports. You cain’t fix stupid.
Precious’s head came up as Bubba put the truck into neutral, and he opened the door. She wasn’t interested enough to get out to see what was going on. Possibly she would have if there had been chicken involved, but since she didn’t see a man with a white beard and a white suit or anything fried, she huffed and put her head back down on the seat.
Bubba trudged tiredly around the truck and into the headlights pooling by the gate. The cicadas were hollering up a storm in a night nearly tangible with humidity, making him sweat by even moving. He wafted a hand over his face while he studied the offending objects as if that would give him the identity of the perpetrators, but no answers were forthcoming. He shoved the one side back and then kicked the bottom several times as it stuck on something. One of the long rungs came off with a rusting groan. He took a moment to put the dismembered rung near the stone pillars that supported the gates, reasoning, Ifin someone drives over that, it’ll give them a flat. With my luck, it’ll be me.
With a mighty grunt, Bubba got the left gate as close as it was going to get to the side of the entrance. The iron parts of the gate wailed with consternation as he enthusiastically shoved it. He eyed the opening and decided it was too small to accommodate the truck or his mother’s Cadillac. So he went to the right side and straightaway lifted it, intending on carrying it instead of fighting the pull of the weighty gate dragging on the ground.
There was a loud click. Bubba remembered that very well. The world was silent and still and there was that one loud click. He would have thought it was a cricket or a beetle, but it didn’t repeat immediately. It didn’t screech in the night like the cicadas. In fact, the click was ominously loud in the sudden absence of all other noise.
It was just the one click. Just the one. Someone said, “AVAST, ye blubbergutted scallywag!”
Then the world went boom.
•
It sounded like Errol Flynn had his sword out and was bellowing, “Thar she blows! Sons of a biscuit eater! Me matey’s dungbie is halfway betwixt his fo’c’s’le and his mizzen mast!”
I’ve been watching too many of those late night movies, Bubba told himself. He tried opening his eyes and found that they felt as if weights were pressed upon them.
“Me will hang ye from the yardarm, if ye doesn’t bustle!”
With extreme effort, Bubba brought one eyelid open. Yep. Errol Flynn. Back from the dead. Captain Blood swinging from the mast and smooching Olivia De Havilland, who looked remarkably identical to Willodean Gray. Basil Rathbone lurked nearby.
“Touch me again, and I’ll shoot off your poop deck,” Olivia De Havilland snarled at Captain Blood. Basil Rathbone began to lick Bubba’s face intently. Yep. That’s a wee bit odd.
Captain Blood pointed at Bubba. “Me matey needs a doctor. Preferably an old salty dog, but yon younger generation will do.”
“The ambulance is coming,” Olivia De Havilland muttered and knelt next to Bubba.
Bubba said, “I liked you better in Gone with the Wind. Joan was never as good as you. She didn’t deserve the Oscar for Suspicion.”
“Oh God,” Olivia said. “He’s hit his head again.”
His head was ringing. Or was that his ears? Yes, there was a pounding there. Everything around him seemed to be played through a muffled megaphone. He could hear everything, but it was distant. It was a very odd sensation. He opened his other eye to see and found that everything was in double. Two Captain Bloods pranced about waving a saber at various objects. Two Basil Rathbones were still trying to lick Bubba’s neck. Two Olivias bent over him with unwavering concern distorting their lovely faces. Two moons shone in the sky. Wait a cotton-picking minute. He blinked and made himself focus. Everything reluctantly came back into one image. However, the ringing didn’t go away.
There was another large man with a Stetson on his head. He wore a khaki uniform with a silver star on his chest. Bubba thought that he knew him, but he certainly hadn’t been in Gone with the Wind or Captain Blood. He stared down at Bubba with distinctly irate expression as if he was a mule that had been chewing on a nest of wasps.
Maybe he’d been in The Killers. The 1946 version with Burt Lancaster, not the Lee Marvin one from the ‘60s.
Comprehension was like a rock dropping on his head. Bubba was lying on the ground, flat on his back, with Willodean Gray above him, and Sheriff John standing behind her. Precious paused in her determined licking to whine at him. Roscoe Stinedurf stood a few more steps back with several of his children peering out from behind his back, which was quite an accomplishment considering how skinny the man actually was. Finally, Dirty David the Dingbatted was waving his saber about, attempting to run the moon through.
Someone have a party?
“Well, don’t you look pertier than a glob of butter laying on top a stack of pancakes,” Sheriff John said to Bubba.
“What happened?” Bubba said, working to get that out. The words didn’t want to work correctly. Neither did his tongue.
Sheriff John jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Explosion.”
“Is there a gas main there?” Willodean asked.
“Don’t have gas line to the house,” Bubba muttered. “Got a propane tank behind the barn.” He turned his head and looked at his hound. His hound looked all right. She’d been protected by the dashboard of the truck. Then he bent his head toward his truck. Ol’ Green was still sitting there with its headlights shining dimly. The front end was singed and blackened. There was a large dent in the hood that was approximately Bubba-sized. Most importantly, a wayward piece of wrought iron had impaled the windshield in a very naughty manner, or it had impaled what was left of the windshield. Where am I going to get another windshield?
His head turned slowly back toward the gate. The right one was contorted into a shape that reminded Bubba of a ball of chicken wire. The left one was blown into the pillar. No one was going to be pulling that one out anytime soon. It appeared as though it was embedded into the bricks. It kind of looks like something in a museum of modern art.
The ambulance came next, and Bubba put his head back on the ground. The paramedics looked him over and asked him if he wanted to go to the hospital. Bubba’s enti
re body ached, and he estimated that his large frame had blown back from the gate, bounced off the truck’s hood, and then had been propelled sideways, partly behind the Chevy. Regardless, he didn’t care to return to the hospital. His eyes weren’t crossed anymore, and the ringing was rapidly fading away. He was going to have bruises in places that he didn’t want to discuss, but he couldn’t afford another hospital bill if he didn’t have to have one.
Willodean stuck her head between the paramedics and said, “You should go and have an x-ray of your noggin, Bubba.”
“I already got a good collection of those,” Bubba said and immediately regretted it when her gorgeous face twisted into hurt dismay. “I ain’t hurt bad. Bruised. Shocked, too. A perty lady could hold my hand and make it all better.”
“I’ll get Mary Jean Holmgreen to come and take care of you,” Willodean said pertly. “She’ll bring Thunderbird, Cheetos, and ice cream.”
Bubba was afraid for a moment and then realized Willodean was teasing him. “My head ain’t hurt. I think the concussion of the explosion done me in for a minute.”
“You were out for at least twenty minutes,” Roscoe Stinedurf said. “I heard the explosion and came running. Found you where you lay. Called the po-lice and such. Let your dog out of the truck. Think she was about to have apoplexy, but I don’t reckon she’s hurt.”
“Thanks, Roscoe,” Bubba said. “You know ifin you have any problems with your vehicles you come talk to me, right?”
Roscoe smiled and it was a funny smile, coming from the man who resembled Bubba’s mental image of Ichabod Crane. “I know, Bubba. But I think you’ve got too much on your plate right now. Fella’s going ninety to nothing, ain’t he?” he said to Willodean.
“Ninety to nothing,” Willodean agreed flatly. “Things happen to Bubba. We should put that on the sign into the county. Things happen to Bubba, the county’s motto. ‘Visit Pegram County Where Stuff Happens to Bubba.’”
It occurred to Bubba that Willodean would have preferred to use another word besides “stuff” but she was containing herself.
“Stuff happens,” Bubba said, “happens to all of us.”
“Stuff happens to some of us a lot more than others,” Willodean said with determined emphasis.
“Got you there, boy,” Roscoe said and motioned at his children. “Come over tomorrow and help you clean up some of this mess.” He patted one boy on the shoulder. “Zedekiah, go over and turn Bubba’s truck off afore the bat’ry dies.” The boy scrambled toward the truck. Once the truck was disengaged, the Stinedurfs ambled off toward their farm.
Precious whined again and put her head down on Bubba’s shoulder. The paramedics began to pack up.
Willodean’s ruby lips flattened into a grim line. She knelt close to Bubba and said, “Does this have something to do with that note or Justin Thyme?”
“I don’t know,” Bubba said frankly.
“The note from M?” Sheriff John asked. “Don’t know who that could be, so why would anyone want to kill Bubba over it?”
“Why does anything happen to Bubba?” Willodean said immediately. “Didn’t you hear? Miz Demetrice announced it in front of a whole audience of people. Who knows who heard it? Or what they thought about it.”
Bubba lay on the ground and thought about getting up. If he wasn’t really hurt, then he supposed he should get up, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to stand up, especially with Willodean watching him. It would be better if she was holding his hand, but he didn’t think she would go for it with her boss nearby.
Ding Dong David the Devilish looked down at Bubba. “Avast ye hearty. Be ye feeling better?”
“David,” Bubba said. “You were here before everything went kaboom.”
“Aye, me came out to see what the progress was on the mystery,” David said.
“How does he know about it?” Willodean demanded.
“He’s a graphologist,” Bubba said.
“He’s a what? He’s a graph-what-a-gist?”
“An expert in handwriting.”
“Since when? Last month he was prancing down the street in a purple thong with purple high heels that RuPaul would have been jealous of.”
David chuckled. “It was the grand opening of my business. It needed pizzazz. Arr.”
Willodean’s mouth opened and then shut again.
“Do you know what happened?” Bubba asked tiredly. He looked up at the stars. He hadn’t looked at the stars for some time. It was nice. The stars didn’t want anything. The stars weren’t trying to kill him or arrest him or anything else but were just being stars. He didn’t want to give the stars any ideas.
Big Joe arrived and came to stand by David. He gave David a patented look of disgust. “What in hellfire are they giving them at the institute?”
“Mostly Prozac. Sometimes lithium. There are some other ones with too many syllables for you to understand,” David said.
Big Joe thought about that for about five seconds before he understood that he had been insulted. “I hope your car insurance is all paid up and that you don’t have any faulty lights on your vehicle,” Big Joe gritted. “That purple Smart car, am I right? The one with the Jolly Roger wraps? The little convertible?”
“Was that a threat?” David asked of no one in particular.
Big Joe decided to ignore David and looked at Bubba again. “Looks like an IED to me, boy.”
“A what?”
“Maybe we should call Brownie in to explain it to you,” Willodean suggested tartly. “It’s an improvised explosive device. It’s what kicks soldiers’ patooties in the Middle East because the locals aren’t enamored of Americans.”
“I shore like it when she uses big words,” Bubba said. He brought his arms up and lifted his head up so he could pillow it on his forearms.
“I believe that once the boy moved the gate, the booby trap went off,” Big Joe said. “My son has three tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. He knows all about IEDs. That’s part of his expertise.”
“Thought he was in the Navy,” Sheriff John said.
“Sure. The boy’s an expert in demolitions and guerilla warfare. He’s going to Seal school next year.”
“That was a bomb,” Bubba said. “Someone set a bomb on our front gate.”
Big Joe rubbed his chin. “Could have been for your mama. She likes to piss people off.”
“Maybe it was someone the judge put away,” Sheriff John said. “Someone could want to ruin his campaign. What better way than to kill off his supporters?”
“Not vote for him,” Bubba said. “That would be better.”
“How do you know it’s an IED?” Willodean demanded.
“I know you think that all us countrified folk are rednecks through and through, but I do have a certain experience with crime technology,” Big Joe said slowly as if he had practiced.
“You are rednecks,” Willodean muttered, “but that doesn’t mean you’re stupid. Of course, I might be wrong,” she added with a pointed look at Bubba.
“The wires were set and attached to the right side of the gate,” Big Joe said. “Once the gate got moved, then the detonator was set off.” He lifted both hands up and spread his fingers out widely. “Boom.”
“The gates were halfway shut,” Bubba said. “They was blocking the driveway.”
“Which meant someone had to get out of their car and move them,” Willodean said. “Big Joe, do you know what kind of explosive was used?”
“The kind that goes boom,” Big Joe said.
Willodean said, “You obnoxious bleep.” But she didn’t say bleep.
“Ya’ll had the same five minute class as the law enforcement did in the county,” Big Joe said derogatorily. “My son was always interested in blowing things up before he went into the Navy. So we made potato launchers and improvised shape charges. Pipe bombs. Launchers. Smoke bombs. You name it, we did it out in the back pasture of my dad’s farm. Scared the pure-D crap, I mean carp, out of the farm animals, but we had a blast.
” He thought about it. “No pun intended.”
Bubba wondered if Big Joe had set the bomb.
“I ain’t bin out here since the Christmas Killer was about,” Big Joe whined, “and ya’ll saw me at the festival for the last three hours, did you not?”
Willodean sighed. “Yeah. Besides I don’t think he would blow Bubba up.”
Willodean’s right. Big Joe would probably just shoot me and get it over with.
“Gee, thanks,” Big Joe said. “All anyone needs is the Internet, something for the accelerant and something for the ignition. They can use rocks or nails or such for the dirty bits. Like that fella did at the Olympics all those years ago. It ain’t that hard. And there ain’t much left of this one.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I think the bomb slipped to one side. Looks like it blasted the pillar more than it did Bubba. Prolly why Bubba’s still alive and kicking.”
Bubba turned his head to look at the pillar. The flashing lights of the ambulance and the police cars showed that beyond the crumpled-ball shape of the right gate, half of the bricks were gone. He couldn’t see them in the darkness, but he suspected that they were strewn out in a cone shape in the direction of the blast.
There was a screeching noise that signaled the arrival of someone else’s car. Precious whined. Bubba said to Willodean, “Quick, hide me. I’ll pay you fifty cents and a piece of Bazooka Joe’s bubble gum to make me disappear.”
However, it was hopeless. Miz Demetrice had arrived.
Chapter Eleven
Bubba and the Dread Naughties
Sunday, August 19th - Monday, August 20th
“We’ll have to check out Nancy Musgrave and her brother,” Sheriff John said to Big Joe. “We need to see ifin they escaped or they got accomplices.”
“Who’s we, kemosabe? This here bomb done blew up on county property,” Big Joe said. “As soon as we get an IED on city property, then it’ll be we.”
“What the hell are you doing here then?”
Big Joe shrugged.